Related papers: Detecting and Characterizing Planetary Systems wit…

[Abridged] We have only been able to comprehensively characterize the atmospheres of a handful of transiting planets, because most orbit faint stars. TESS will discover transiting planets orbiting the brightest stars, enabling, in…

When extrasolar planets are observed to transit their parent stars, we are granted unprecedented access to their physical properties. It is only for transiting planets that we are permitted direct estimates of the planetary masses and…

The search for double transit planetary systems opens new possibilities for the transit searches and for studies of orbital stability, stellar irradiation, and migration scenarios, among others. We explore the OGLE lightcurves of stars with…

I present a review of observational efforts to study known extrasolar planets by methods that are complementary to the radial velocity technique. I describe the current state of attempts to detect and characterize such planets by…

In support of the Astrobiology Science Strategy, this whitepaper outlines some key technology challenges pertaining to the remote search for life in exoplanetary systems. Finding evidence for life on rocky planets outside of our solar…

It has been shown that an Earth-size planet or a super-Earth, in resonance with a transiting Jupiter-like body in a short-period orbit around an M star, can create detectable TTV signals (Kirste \& Haghighipour, 2011). Given the low masses…

In our solar system massive outer planets dominate in terms of both mass and angular momentum, but few such planets are among the more than 4000 currently confirmed exoplanets, and none of these have accurately determined densities. Here I…

The era of exoplanet characterization is upon us. For a subset of exoplanets -- the transiting planets -- physical properties can be measured, including mass, radius, and atmosphere characteristics. Indeed, measuring the atmospheres of a…

For extrasolar planets with orbital periods, P>10 days, radial velocity surveys find non-circular orbital eccentricities are common, <e>~0.3. Future surveys for extrasolar planets using the transit technique will also have sensitivity to…

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will photometrically monitor approximately 1 billion stars for ten years. The resulting light curves can be used to detect transiting exoplanets. In particular, as demonstrated by Lund et al.…

Some transiting planets discovered by the Kepler mission display transit timing variations (TTVs) induced by stellar spots that rotate on the visible hemisphere of their parent stars. An induced TTV can be observed when a planet crosses a…

As a planet transits the face of a star, it accelerates along the line-of-sight. The changing delay in the propagation of photons produces an apparent deceleration of the planet across the sky throughout the transit. This persistent…

Our understanding of extra-solar planet systems is highly driven by advances in observations in the past decade. Thanks to high precision spectrograph, we are able to reveal unseen companions to stars with the radial velocity method. High…

We present a technique for verifying or refuting exoplanet candidates from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission by searching for nearby eclipsing binary stars using higher-resolution archival images from ground-based…

Unlike hot Jupiters or other gas giants, super-Earths are expected to have a wide variety of compositions, ranging from terrestrial bodies like our own to more gaseous planets like Neptune. Observations of transiting systems, which allow us…

In close eclipsing binaries, measurements of the variations in binary's eclipse timing may be used to infer information about the existence of circumbinary objects. To determine the possibility of the detection of such variations with CoRoT…

We demonstrate that microlensing can be used for detecting planets in binary stellar systems. This is possible because in the geometry of planetary binary systems where the planet orbits one of the binary component and the other binary star…

In the companion paper we began the task of systematically studying the detection of planets in wide orbits ($a > 1.5 R_E$) via microlensing surveys. In this paper we continue, focusing on repeating events. We find that, if all planetary…

Of the approximately 350 extrasolar planets currently known, of order 10% orbit evolved stars with radii R >~ 2.5 R_sun. These planets are of particular interest because they tend to orbit more massive hosts, and have been subjected to…

Aims: We present 11 high-precision photometric transit observations of the transiting super-Earth planet GJ1214b. Combining these data with observations from other authors, we investigate the ephemeris for possible signs of transit timing…